Majimonsters: Rosewood Journey - Chapter 178

[Magma Rush]!

“SQUEEEE”!

Ulvor the Eruptodon’s body glowed a dark red color as the lava flowing in his veins began to pump even faster than before. Heat and smoke began to radiate even more violently off of his body moments before he rapidly charged forward, the momentum akin to a boulder rolling down a mountainside.

The rabbit-man Terrorcotta Soldier didn’t panic when it saw the charging volcanic hog, but instead took on a fighting stance and crouched low, a faint orange glow surrounding it’s body. White motes of aether began to build up around the rabbit-man’s leg, indicating that it was preparing a technique.

Undeterred, Ulvor kept rushing forward, the thought of crushing this jumpy rodent pleasing it greatly.

But just as he got within striking distance of the rabbit-man, the rabbit-man suddenly leaped forward and by-passed the incoming charge.

Bori felt a sympathetic sharp pain crawling up his left flank, mirroring the stick jab that the rabbit-man was inflicting on Ulvor.

[Oi, that smarts! Cauterize]!

Ulvor’s body began to glow red once more as Fire aether condensed at the starting point of the jagged wound on his side. As the rabbit-mans’s stick kept opening the wound further and further, the Fire aether gathered by the [Cauterize] technique did it’s best to close it up.

The rabbit-man and Ulvor eventually finished passing by one another, leaving the latter with a significantly smaller but still annoying wound on its side, while the former looked barely phased.

The situation looked rather grim if this kept up. This lead to Bori to rapidly think through what he could do in order to win.

[Come on Bori, you gotta figure out how to beat this guy], Bori thought to himself, [You can’t bring out Zola, her affinity is a bad match-up, so you gotta use an ability to even the odds…even if you’re only lightly trained in them…].

When not going on dangerous adventures and risking life and limb with his friends, Bori was usually training and learning to be a type of binder known as a Knight, more specifically, a Champion.

Champions are able to modify the bonds they have with their majimonsters, allowing the binder to empower their partners in more specific ways.

Bori had recently wrapped his head around understanding [Galvanizing Bond], an ability that would boost Ulvor’s reflexes,allowing the Eruptodon to move at blazing fast speeds and be able to dodge even quicker. While normally this would be a good idea, Bori wasn’t sure about this.

The rabbit-man Terrorcotta Soldier had proven itself to be an unusually keen opponent, always jumping and counter attacking right when Ulvor was about to smash it into pieces.

Bori knew that even if Ulvor could move faster, the rabbit-man could easily jump upwards and just wait him out. If he wanted to beat it, he had to figure out how the rabbit sensed what they were planning to do and how to get the rabbit to come to him.

[We have to figure out exactly how it senses our moves…so let’s remove one of the options. Ulvor, Ash Cloud]!

Ulvor’s lava blood began to churn once more as Fire aether condensed deep within the confines of his body.

The Eruptodon began to take deep, powerful breaths, each exhalation being accompanied by huge gouts of ash and smoke generated from within it’s roiling magma core. Eventually, the entire Eruptodon’s body was engulfed in a dark, slightly red tinted, cloud of ash, the heat causing the area around him to waver and shake. Unusually, the cloud of ash didn’t disperse and engulf the entire room, but merely roiled in a small area surrounding the Eruptodon.

The rabbit-man Terrorcotta Soldier looked relatively unperturbed at the cloud of ash, but an outside observer might have noticed that the soldier’s grip on his weapons tightened ever so slightly.

At the same time as Ulvor began to surround himself in a cloud of ash, Bori began to perform a series of hand signs.

As he made each successive hand sign, a small white spell circle began to manifest, line by line in sync with the hand signs.

Eventually, a spell circle inscribed with the ancient maji runes for “speed” and “enhancement” formed in front of Bori. Once it was a completed, Bori stopped doing any additional hand signs…and then ate the spell circle.

Bori and Ulvor both shuddered as they felt that the bond between them noticably changed.

The connection between them was still strong, it’s just that aether flowing between them had taken a different quality, one geared towards speed. Ulvor’s body already seemed more twitchy and reactive due to this change in their bond.

The rabbit-man didn’t notice this particular change, but it did feel something was now off. In preparation, it began to channel Earth aether into his stick weapons.

[It’s preparing something…I don’t know what, but Ulvor prepare a technique and get ready to counter], Bori commanded.

Ulvor released a small grunt as his body began to glow red once more.

Now both rabbit and boar were primed and wanting to strike at one another, but not yet.

The two stood perfectly still as they waited to see who would make the first move, tension building up to the point of suffocating.

The Fog of War that covered their area was surprisingly still…quiet…tense.

But eventually, the silence became too much.

The rabbit-man leaped forward, launching himself like an arrow, it’s stick weapons radiating Earth aether as he aimed to swing through the center of the ash cloud, thinking it wouldn’t matter what part it hit as long as it hit.

Bori and Ulvor had other plans in mind.

[Here it comes, Magma Rush]!